SEOUL: South Korea's capital has acted to ban the cramped basement flats made famous by Oscar-winning film Parasite after four people drowned in subterranean dwellings during the flooding caused by record-breaking rains this week.
A disabled woman and a teenager died on Thursday from waterlogged, mud-covered homes in the Gwanak district, an AFP reporter saw.
Their deaths - trapped by floodwater in their basement apartment - has caused public outrage, with President Yoon Suk-yeol visiting their destroyed home this week and calling for officials to do more to help the poor and vulnerable during natural disasters.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government wants to get rid of tiny, cramped basement flats - known as banjiha - which are typically cheap to rent but prone to damp and flooding.
Around 200,000 households in these flats make up about 5 per cent of the housing stock in the South Korean capital, according to official figures.
In a press release on Wednesday, Seoul said it would stop issuing permits to build such homes, while pushing to phase out existing basement and semi-basement flats.
The city plans to begin discussions with the national government to ban the use of basements or semi-basement spaces for residential purposes.
Four out of 11 people killed in the week's record downpours drowned after their basement flats were inundated with floodwater, officials said.
Bong Joon Ho's home, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2020, is a poor family living in a dank basement home that received global attention due to such abodes.